[2.2 Video Guide] Tanky, High DPS, Crit Blade Vortex Build [HC/SC & Atziri Viable]

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Atrav wrote:

Ok I'm really liking it so far. I'm currently 50 and doing cruel. So before I really go balls deep into leveling this characters up how is it doing high tier maps? Anyone who is using this build can give some feedback or post videos showcasing it?

I'm running 11s and 12s at the moment, no real problems. There are certain boss mechanics that you must watch out for, but for the most part, I'm doing quite well.

So I've been rocking this build and it's pretty solid, I find that there is A LOT of debate about what ascendancy to go with and I personally find that people GREATLY underestimate the strength of Pathfinder. I pop granite/basalt flasks literally every hard blue/yellow mob I fight which gives me a consistent 25% damage increase whenever I need it on top of all the defenses gained (come on seriously 50% chance to avoid shock is good enough but the rest is gucci). I'm pretty much unkillable except for those extremely hard hitting boss mechanics.

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I think a lot of people don't understand how blade vortex works. I'm sitting at roughly 11k tooltip DPS which is realistically around 40k DPS with me hovering around 20 stacks, I max out around 156k dps with vaal haste up and pots so the damage output of this build is JUST FINE. There's always room for improvements but I don't see why anyone would pick assassin over pathfinder.

My only complaints?
* Herald of Ash seems underwhelming, I would like to see some math done on the overkill damage.
* I hate having to cast the second blade vortex for power charges, but that's just me being lazy. It's really not so bad to cast it once every 8 seconds or so.

Good build overall, I love it's simplicity and it's not too expensive.

Edit: added potions
Edit 2: Updated gear and added Atziri's Promise, HUGE dps upgrade and the leech is perfect for curse immune maps (just turn warlords mark off and laugh with your incredibly huge mana pool)

What sort of rare daggers would you want to look out for when it comes to replacing the Unique ones?

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Krobelux wrote:

What sort of rare daggers would you want to look out for when it comes to replacing the Unique ones?

in my opinion divinarius is the best option, but if you seek more res you can try search for like 75%+ icreased spell damage 150%+ increased crit for spells and smth like 25%+ chaos res(or other res or what do you prefer^_^)

For the early levels, what should I look for? I play with the dual lifesprigs, but I feel like missing a bit of damage. Should I take some physical dmg?

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kewkie wrote:

For the early levels, what should I look for? I play with the dual lifesprigs, but I feel like missing a bit of damage. Should I take some physical dmg?

Dunno how u can miss damage, I was playing 2x lifesprigs till I equip 2x divinators and gameplay was like I run and everything dying around :)

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troyawp wrote:

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kewkie wrote:

For the early levels, what should I look for? I play with the dual lifesprigs, but I feel like missing a bit of damage. Should I take some physical dmg?

Dunno how u can miss damage, I was playing 2x lifesprigs till I equip 2x divinators and gameplay was like I run and everything dying around :)

Think it was because of bad playstyle and bad links, optimized a bit and now it is a breeze :)



Body armour sucks, but I wont spend much into an upgrade since i level up so fast. But it is awesome! Just need another cheap divinarius now and lv 66 can come :)

Quick question. Would this build work well going as a Witch Occultist instead? I was looking at the Occultist passives and they would synergise pretty well with this build.

As occultist you can get:

Forbidden Power: +1 Maximum power charges and 10% chance to gain power charge on crit.

This gives you free power charge generation without the need to run a second Vortex setup. Would make the playstyle more smooth and less clunky having to constantly keep up power charges manually.

Profane Bloom: Cursed enemies you kill have a 20% chance to explode, dealing a quarter of their life as chaos damage to enemies around them. Cursed enemies take 10% increased damage.

I dont know about you guys but this seems pretty sweet with enemies being perma cursed around you thanks to Blasphemy + Warlords Mark. Great synergy here once again.

Malediction: Enemies can have one additional curse. When you kill an enemy, for each curse on them you gain 4% of non chaos damage as additional chaos damage for 4 sconds.

So here we can potentially run Blasphemy + Warlords Mark + Enfeeble? (or curse of your choice) since we get the option for free dual cursing. Again, pretty good synergy, we can add another defensive layer by having a second curse on enemies at all times plus we gain an additional 8% dmg as chaos dmg.


So what do you guys think? I know its a bit different than what Lifting originally posted but i just dont want to play SCION yet again and feel this build could work just as well, albiet differently, as a Witch Occultist. Thoughts?

Apologies for the stupid question but how legit is this build? I'm dying for a good melee-esque build and earthquake just isn't cutting it for me. I was a huge fan of whirlwind barb in d2 so this sounds so appealing.

I tried it very briefly when levelling my assasssin and whilst it hit very very hard and instakilled everything, I did have to stop and cast the charges up a lot. How do you go about lenghtening the duration of the skill?

Awesome guide however I'm definitely keen to try it out!

@Khaylee Sounds interesting, but wouldn't it be more like a glass cannon then? For SC it would be fine, but leveling a scion is pretty smooth.